The Blockheads
7 December 2012When we visited Kent in March, you may remember I was struck by the fact that that the village next to Sandwich is called Ham. We returned to the area last week for a lovely long weekend in Ham. On Friday evening we made the short trip to the Astor Community Theatre in Deal to see a concert by The Blockheads. We last saw The Blockheads in Milton Keynes 5 years ago (reviewed here in July 2007) when they were celebrating their thirtieth anniversary, with Phil Jupitus standing in for the late Ian Dury. The Deal concert was part of their thirty-fifth anniversary tour – particularly impressive as the drummer is only 26 years old! This time there were no guest stars, just a very slick band that have clearly been playing together for a long time. The original members of the band must all be in their 60s: Mickey Gallagher lamented the passing years, saying “we used to turn up to gigs and ask where are the women – now we ask where are the toilets!”. But the Blockheads are still a great band. Last time we saw them they were joined by the great jazz saxophone player Gilad Atzmon, but this time the quite different style of excellent regular saxophonist Dave Lewis, combined with Ian Dury’s witty lyrics and the cockney accent of singer Derek the Draw made The Blockheads sound, at times, remarkably like Madness. It was a great gig – I look forward to the fortieth anniversary!
posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:27 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home